


We Were Not Made to Be Abandoned

by superloonyluna



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Awkward Flirting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Harry is a little bit like Kill Your Darlings, Hurt/Comfort, I think or maybe hope it gets better as the story progresses though, Jealousy, Lucius Malfoy Being an Asshole, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Harry Potter, POV Draco Malfoy, Slow Burn, The Golden Trio, blaise is a gay icon, draco is a little miserable, draco isn't a total asshole, he's still sassy and scarcastic but he doesn't think everyone is below him, hogwarts is NOT included in this, honestly my writing is kind of a wild ride you've been warned ahh, i haven't really decided yet, it gets better as the story progresses though, kind of dead poets society vibes, of course, pansy is a badass queen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:01:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superloonyluna/pseuds/superloonyluna
Summary: Draco has spent his whole life cowering under the watchful, cruel eye of his father - then he goes to University and meets Harry Potter; so unlike everyone he's ever known that Draco can't help but be drawn to him. After years of expecting the worst, could Harry remind him how to live again?College AU where Harry discovers Draco has an awful past, and so takes him on crazy adventures to help him realise life is worth living. Hogwarts and magic are NOT a thing in this.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. the dust of everyday life

**Author's Note:**

> so; I'm really not sure exactly what this is - I had a super random idea in the middle of another multi-chapter thing and decided to go with it because apparently I can only make bad decisions. The premise is a little weird: it's an AU where basically everyone are muggles, Draco goes to Oxford and everything goes down there. I haven't really changed many characters except Tonks is younger than Draco. It's told from his pov in the form of journal entries, but it'll read like a normal first person perspective. The first chapter is kind of an intro, then he'll meet Harry etc. 
> 
> Please be patient with me - I'm not the best at writing, and I just do it because I like it. Please feel free to leave a comment at any point in the work - they really mean so much to me and I love reading all your thoughts. 
> 
> Disclaimer; I obviously don't own any of these characters etc - they belong to J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. However I'd like to say I don't agree with all the slightly shocking views she's been disclosing recently. 
> 
> AnyWAY: sorry for this train wreck of a fic, enjoy <3  
> (Trigger warning: mentions and themes of abuse)

**11:58pm, 22 August, 1984**

My name is Draco Malfoy, and I have spent my whole life waiting for it to end. 

Well, perhaps not. I have been known to exaggerate – Tonks thinks it’s finny, so I’m partial to hyperbolic renditions if it means I’ll get an eye-roll in return, or a smile, if I’m lucky. 

Although – this _is_ just everything that’s taking up space in my head – and my mind has always slid into the dramatic side of chaos, so maybe that’ll be my excuse. Or maybe I don’t need excuses; I spend my life excusing things – my father demands an explanation for every single thing I do, and it’s tiring as fuck. 

My Aunt – the nice one – suggested I write this. My family is an extended gene pool of nasty, contemptuous bastards and somehow Andromeda turned out perfectly normal. (Read; a nice, kind human being.) I dislike my family – my _father_ – for many reasons, but mainly because they not only taught me to lie, and lie _well_ ; but they taught me to lie without feeling guilty. 

I first met Drea when I was nine years old. She never came to social events, family gatherings, the dreaded _God-awful_ galas, and I never even knew she existed until I received a note – handed to me by my school’s principal as I was leaving a geography lesson – with an address and a message; _I guess your mother never told you about me, (surprise, surprise), but I’m your Aunt, and I’d love for you to come over for tea._

A secret Aunt I’d never heard of or from sounded so good I hadn’t dared believe it, and had gone after school expecting nothing but another disappointment; yet another person who would find faults in everything I did. 

I’d sat, perched on the edge of the seat, (a bad habit I still haven’t been able to shake – it’s easier to move away if you don’t settle down,) eyes wide and a little disbelieving as she bustled around her small kitchen. She was so clearly different from us but still undeniably _family_ – the hair, the line of her nose, a gaze that comes off _slightly_ cold, even when softened with a smile – then she’d turned around, still chattering, holding two chipped mugs, and caught the heel of her kitten shoe on the fraying loose threads of the rug, spilt the tea, still hot and steaming all down her leg and said _fuck_ with such obvious vehemence that I’d stayed, gone back every week since, and felt safer in her home than I have felt anywhere else. 

Drea has a daughter, Nymphadora, (Tonks, unless you want to be yelled at), who is three years younger than me and who has three times the backbone – and I don’t make many promises, but I’d do almost anything to make them happy. 

I love Drea in a way that I could never love the rest of my family because even though she says what she means, it doesn’t sound like criticism, doesn’t come out cutting and harsh and cruel. Because she doesn’t try to insult my intelligence, or my sanity, doesn’t think we’re above everyone else simply because of a _name_ – and because she’s so clearly human you’d be hard pressed _not_ to like her. 

She reminded you why you wanted to live and then let you think you arrived at that conclusion by yourself. She’s generous like that. 

And I’d never say it to her face, if she ever suggests something – which she hardly ever does because I think she’s intuitive enough to know that my mind equates suggestions with orders, with commands, with my _father_ – she makes it sound more like a statement; a causal _did you know_ , and even when I give her some quip, _yawn, try again later_ – which she knows I mean nothing by because I’m only short with people I actually care about – although she doesn’t realise, I take everything she tells me to heart. 

I think part of the reason that I like her so much is because I know that she, too, carries a certain pain and callously – _grotesquely_ – I was, and always have been drawn to people whose heartbeat echoes with the dull resounding ache of an unspeakable secret. Everyone likes seeing bits of themselves reflected in others. 

So: I’m writing this because Drea suggested it. In just under a week I’m leaving for Oxford – miles away from here and the weekly comfort, the _salvation_ that is her living room, or kitchen, or roof garden, or any space that she is really – and I was sitting on the kitchen table, watching her chop carrots and correcting an essay Tonks had written for English and I’d blurted out something on the lines of _what the fuck am I going to do without you._

“Draco,” she had laughed, “you’re going to be fine, darling. You won’t have to look over your shoulder all the time, you won’t have any expectations to shadow you – you won’t _need_ me.” 

“But I _will_.” 

I was panicking. I had been thinking about this for _days_ – Drea is everything to me. Tonks is basically my sister. How could I just _leave_ them? 

Later, over dinner, I was telling her about how the essay I had been editing for Tonks reminded me of a narrative I’d written for a past assessment where half of the mark was based on a personal reflection of your own writing. I was explaining how everyone had _hated_ it – Blaise had complained about it non-stop for a solid week – but I had thought it was brilliant because you were given the chance to explain away all the bullshit you'd written and no one could pull you up on it because it was _your work,_ and because you could say _this is what I actually meant when I wrote this_ even if it clearly _didn’t_ mean that – there was nothing the teachers could do because _metaphors and analogies exist, thank you elementary school._ I’d received full marks, which, to be frank, isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, with the exception that I hadn’t spent the usual astronomical amount of time working on it that I usually dedicated to anything school related – and therefore anything my father was likely to criticise – and had written it all out the night before I’d handed it in. 

“Huh,” Drea had pulled a few strands of hair out of her cat’s claw, then tucked them back in again, like she always did when she was thinking, and; “you know, I think you should keep a journal.” 

“Is that a proposition?” I’d snapped, probably unfairly – but it was far too close to the demands that usually came from my father – incarcerating phrases in varying forms of _you should_ and _you must_ and _you will._

Drea had shrugged, pushing some peas onto her fork with the tip of her little finger. “I was just thinking about what you said before. How Oxford is a long way and all. I thought, well, if ever you missed me – which you _won’t,_ of course, but say, hypothetically, you _did_ – then you could write a journal and pretend you were writing to me.”

I think I might have given her a look, because she added; “and then I could read it when you come back and pretend I’m back at college and live vicariously through you.” 

And, well, if she puts it like that there’s no real leg-room _not_ to write without me being an incredible asshole – and I’m kind of lured in by the knowledge that this would be something my father would absolutely _loathe_ , because he’d call it weak. But here’s the thing, and I don’t know how to put this without sounding incredibly fucking stupid, but that’s just it: I _feel_ incredibly fucking stupid. Isn’t this the sort of thing girls write when they’re fourteen or something? Dear fucking Merlin. 

I keep looking over my shoulder every time there’s even the slightest noise, in case someone is about to open the door. 

The only way I could even open the book and take out a pen was by convincing myself that this is really meant for Drea, and not me just rambling on and on because I am, in fact, everything my father thinks. (Pathetic, useless, other synonyms of similar sentiments.) 

So, here you are Drea. This is for you. Thank you for being the only person I’m related to who actually treats me like family. 

I really don’t know how to start this. I’m too much of a perfectionist to just _write_ – verbose and spontaneous and just one casual word after another. Everything I do has to be considered and thought out and _right_ – because that’s what I’ve been taught is expected of me, and that anything less than perfect isn’t good enough, is a failure, is unforgivable. Drea would probably say I’m over thinking it. Then she’d probably tell me to chill the fuck out. 

“Draco,” she always sooths when I’m worrying about something, “slow down. What are the facts?”

Maybe she’s right and there is no _correct_ way to write this. I don’t even have that much to say, at the moment, because I haven’t even left yet, but I couldn’t sleep, and I don’t want to try to sleep just yet because my brain is still _going_ , because I leave in four days and I don’t know what the fuck to expect and I _hate_ that because it means I can’t prepare, or plan – so, in the meantime here is a de-constructed list of some of the facts: 

1\. I’ve lived in the same place my whole life – because our house is inherited; one of those cold, large stone things that most people raise their eyebrows at as they pass by and go, _wow, they must be rich_. We are – and it’s not something I advertise, nor something I’m particularly proud of. 

2\. I’ve already said it, but my family are assholes. That pretty much sums them up. 

3\. The only other person who I can honestly believe cares about me is Blaise – my longest friendship and one of the few reasons I exist in a slightly less harrowing state of fear. He lives in the house next to ours, on the right side if you stand at the door facing the street, and I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. He looks like one of those people you turn your head to watch in the street but do your best to pretend you’re not looking at; someone who you’d _never_ actually approach because they have a slight ethereality about them – a kind of other-worldliness which renders you a little lost for words. He laughs and calls bullshit whenever I tell him this, however, and he loves to quote (if it tells you anything) Oscar Wilde – loudly and ostentatiously, and preferably standing on a table amid the general public.

4\. We’ve just completed our A levels – and are going to Oxford University. I know the assumption will be that I was accepted there because of our name, because the Malfoys can buy their entry into anything – which is true, except that I was offered a full scholarship. (Father refused this, because he’d like it known that the Malfoys don’t need mundane, _common_ things like scholarships.) 

Really, in an ideal world, it would be the perfect escape: Oxford is far enough from Wiltshire that I could forget everything here exists; I could study art history, stop being so fucking scared of everything, and figure out how to live. But ideal worlds don’t exist, because my father is, well, my father – so I’ll study medicine and major in neuroscience because that’s what he wants – and Blaise will study classics, because, unlike me, his parents have a herd of children and really don’t give that much of a fuck. Lucky for some. 

5\. I love my mum, but she once did something I can never forgive her for – and so I can’t trust her. I have Drea for that. 

6\. Despite the fact that I won’t exactly be doing what I’d like, Oxford has always been a faint beacon of hope, simply because my father won’t be there. So I have a sort of childish dream, or maybe plea, that it’ll make me feel something – I don’t know what exactly, but whatever it is that makes other people want to get up each morning and go through another day. Because here, at the Manor, for my whole life I’ve been watched, scrutinised, chastened and disciplined: contorted into whoever it is my father has decided is good enough to be his son. 

So, I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late now, and I’ll never become who I was really meant to be – and I’ll always be my father’s puppet: ever the disappointment. Or maybe Drea will be right, and I’ll learn how to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is a quote from Picasso. 
> 
> Sorry I know this chapter was a little dense - Harry comes in next chapter and it'll get lighter.


	2. the angel in the marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an uneventful goodbye, the beginnings of freedom, and a boy with green eyes

**1:17pm, 26 August**

We go to church one last time before I leave, and that’s the last I see of my Father. It’s not exactly a heartfelt farewell. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to have a normal father-son relationship, except ours is so far removed from anything remotely close to _normal_ that I can’t even begin to imagine it. 

We go to church - and have gone for as long as I’ve been alive - not because we’re actually religious, but because my family is ostentatiously adamant about upholding orthodox practices entirely for show - even if they no longer hold any actual relevance or meaning. Simply so Father can tell his associates; _oh, no, ever so sorry, I can’t be in on Sunday mornings - I have church with my family, you know_ \- as though this will immediately bring to mind connotations of some loving and family-orientated man to smooth over his inherently vindictive nature. I’m sure it actually works, too. 

I think that’s some kind of sacrilege - but Father evidently doesn’t care what any kind of God thinks - even if his life revolves around how the rest of the world see us. 

An asshole and a hypocrite - clearly he has a lot working in his favour. 

Despite this, I’ve never actually minded going to church - sometimes, when I was quite a bit younger, I remember I even used to look forward to it. It was my one moment of transient respite: even if Father looked over and saw things to critique, yet _another_ thing that I could be doing better - there was absolutely nothing he could say: he would have to grit his teeth in silence, and his hands would have to remain fisted by his side. 

Drea’s house and the inside of St Bartholomew church were the two places where I knew nothing could hurt me. And so for one hour every Sunday I was granted an interlude between Father’s demonstrations of distaste (to put it nicely) - however he chose to deliver it. And, although often, over the rest of the day I’d be on the receiving end of extra, more frequent and somehow harsher ill-use, as though to compensate for the hour I’d been left unscathed - I never minded as much, was able to let my mind drift away, back to the cool, slightly echoing emptiness inside the church, the solidity of the pews, the assurance that there was always something consistent and solid and permanent waiting for me each week.

Today’s sermon is from the Book of Exodus; an aptly ironic teaching about the expectation that parents were to lead with an example of patience, of tolerance, and though I stare resolutely ahead the whole time, I can see Father in my peripheral vision; jaw tense and clenched, back straight. 

See? I want to yell at him; _See?_ Even God wants you to be kind. 

(Or _fair_ , even - since I don’t think he knows the definition of that word.) 

I don’t, though; if he’s taught me anything, it’s that silence is always the better option. 

Sometimes, like today, after the service he has to go into London for business - to meet with a client, or someone in a social circle he’s trying to make an impression within, (or assert a dominance over) - and so after we’ve been mingling with the other families for as long as he deems is enough, he kisses my mother on the cheek, and before he steps into the waiting car that will take him to the station, he beckons me over. 

Mother waits by the church gate, and I know better than to look over my shoulder at her as I follow him. 

I stand by the car as he shoulders off his jacket, drapes it over the backseat to keep from creasing; my hands by my sides, expression composed into something I hope is politely expectant, and look up at him. 

Looking at the ground, I have been told (many times) is a sign of cowardice. 

“You know what I expect of you.” He barely looks at me, casting his eyes over briefly and then quickly away, as though the longer he looks the worse I’ll appear, and his lip curls a little into a familiar sneer of distaste. “And you know the consequences of unfulfilling those expectations.” 

It’s not a question, but I nod anyway, a single quick jerk of the head. “Yes, sir.” 

“I will not have you degrading the family name,” he keeps his voice low, almost a hiss, contempt laced indelicately through each word like he’s talking to some sweaty, grovelling vagrant crawling after him, snivelling and repulsive, not his own son, - “and I will not tolerate any of your… _antics,_ ” he says, and his eyes glint, as though I’ve spent my life running wild and causing havoc rather than always doing everything he’s ever asked of me without complaint. 

He stares at me then, and I’ve always hated that more than when he won’t look at me - because I’m almost certain he can see the fear behind my expression however much I try to hide it. And, like I knew he would but, still, it takes me by surprise, he raises his hand, quick and sudden, as though to remind me just what that _intolerance_ will entail. I flinch automatically, my shoulders hunching inwards and curling away defensively, and I curse myself - seeing the look that passes across his face; an odd blend of satisfaction and loathing; but we’re in public, and all he does is grip my face, his thumb and index finger digging into the sides of my jaw. 

His grasp is strong - it always is - and I know I’ll have two ugly mottled fingerprint blotches on my cheeks for the walk home - his own little farewell gift. He shakes his wrist a little, my face twisting with the movement, a little shake to each side to punctuate his words; “don’t you dare disappoint me.” 

“No, sir,” I grit out, and he lets me go, turns around swiftly and I watch the car roll away down the gravel path, tires crunching the stones together, trying not to think too much and focusing on slowing my heart; pounding in my chest as though I’ve been running for an hour, the sick, lurching feeling I’ve come to associate with him swelling through me. 

_He can’t follow you to Oxford,_ I remind myself, only it doesn’t help - and it feels like I could fly to the other side of the world and he’d still be there, breathing down my neck. 

Mother glances over me when I return to her, brushes a hand across my jaw, but says nothing, and I look at the ground in shame - because I feel I’ve failed in so many ways. 

“Draco,” she says, her voice soft and tired, “he just wants the best for you.”  
I nod, chest tightening, and even though I want so badly to believe her, I can’t, and she must see it on my face because she sighs, opens her mouth as though to admonish me, but then she stops with a small shake of her head, holding her hand out instead and so I offer her my arm, and we walk home in silence. 

At eleven I take the bus into town, past my old school and the small collection of shops that are dotted along the main drag; the library and post office and sweet shop - and down to the end of the road near the bridge, where there is a pub that overlooks the river. 

Drea and Tonks are already sitting at one of the tables - squashed in the back of the room. It smells like it always does; a very faint, warm almondy tang of liqueurs, the rosemary that seems to be on every dish served here, regardless of what they are, (I once found a sprig on a chocolate mousse) and, of course, though this is everywhere, the slightly suffocating smoky haze - which I like because I associate it with Blaise, who will smoke anything that burns, and because I like the stinging bitterness the first drag always leaves at the back of my throat; a tangible extension of the choking feeling my father always leaves behind. 

It’s slightly grimy here - a little lower-class (or common, as my mother would say) - and something the rest of our family would hate, so we sort of love it out of spite. Besides, the chips are pretty fucking good. 

Tonks is in full swing when I slide into the booth next to Drea - rattling off a mile a minute about her maths professor - who I know of only because I’ve been on the end of her complaints for a few weeks now since he started taking her class - something about _what a fucking incompetent asshole, as if I don’t know Pythagoras, I’m not fucking five years old, fucking hell_ \- but breaks off the second she sees me, face splitting into a lopsided grin; “fucking _finally_ , I’m starving.”

Lunch is hard for the sole reason that I know as soon as it ends I’ll have to go, and then that’ll be it: but even as I berate myself for being so weak, I don’t want to say goodbye, and so I ignore the topic for the entire hour, telling them about my father’s parting _don’t you disappoint me,_ turning it into a joke, like I always do, something casual and funny rather than a threat. 

Afterwards, when the bus is visible at the far end of the street across the bridge, drawing steadily closer and I can’t really delay it anymore, I turn to Drea, take a deep breath and open my mouth to say Merlin-knows what, but she’s leaning up to press a kiss to my cheek, turning away from me with a hearty sniff, saying, a little thickly; “don’t forget I fucking love you,” and has already taken five steps away before I can even come up with a reply. 

Tonks rolls her eyes. “It’s like you’re never coming back, for Merlin’s sake - it’s only fucking Oxford, not another planet.” 

I grin, even though it _feels_ like another planet, and she must be feeling it a little too, because even as she continues to scoff; _cries at fucking everything, she does,_ when she reaches up to hug me she grips a little tighter than usual, clings for a second too long, and so I hold her until she lets go; running my eyes over her face - her spikey eyeliner, cropped, fading purple hair, the little upturn of her nose, and suddenly feel a rush of affection for the familiarity of it all: how easy everything is with her. 

“Promise you’ll write?” I ask as the bus pulls up, knowing full well she won’t. 

“Every day,” she says, giving me an exaggerated wink and I fight away a smile. 

“No, you won’t.” 

“How dare you!” She places a hand over her heart, turning her face away in mock outrage, “don’t you trust me?”

“No,” I tell her flatly, and I’m grinning despite the fact that I’m mostly joking, even as my heart aches a little; mourning the fact that I always need other people more than they need me. Sometimes, during particularly dismal moments, I wonder if I suddenly disappeared, would everyone just continue as normal, plodding through life as though nothing had happened and I had never been there at all. 

I take a seat on the left side of the bus so I can see her as it leaves; arms crossed over her chest, shoulders hunched a little against the cold, and I think she’s about to turn away, but as it pulls off a little frown appears between her brows and suddenly she’s running after the bus, oblivious to everyone else, as per usual, drawing startled, quickly averted glances from passers-by, her hair a purple blur behind her and yelling; “mum’s a fucking sob-story, but I’ll miss you too, asshole!”

Her voice, muffled and faint, floats through the gap in the window - open a crack at the top to let the air in - and people turn around to stare, but I honestly couldn’t give much of a fuck because she’s so _her_ ; crazy and wild and so courageously uncaring, and I’m smiling so hard it actually hurts. 

It makes up for later, when my mother takes me to the train station. I’m sure we must look a little pathetic, compared to the entourage that have shown up to see Blaise off; his whole family, it seems - the result of _many_ marriages; crowding the platform, jostling and loud and argumentative, like they always are, until Mrs Zabini glides over, radiating a subtle, distinctly French severity that calls implicitly for obedience, and her children fall silent; some meek and others a little resentfully - and I know it’s under the ever perpetual threat of _disappointing the family name._

I drag my eyes away as she fusses over Blaise; _ma chérie, as-tu tout, vas-tu bien_ \- and turn to my mother as she rests a soft hand on my shoulder, then leans in to kiss my forehead, quick and perfunctory. We’re almost the same height, especially when she wears heels, but I’ve always felt small around her, as though I’m trying so hard to compensate for something that I seem to shrink - or maybe it just comes from constantly cowering, trying to _make_ myself as small as possible, as though by doing so I can be less of a disappointment.

She doesn’t say much; maybe she thinks I’ve already heard everything there is to say from my father, and so she simply smiles as she steps back, hands folding neatly in front of her, head held high and gives me a little nod; “have a good term, Draco.” 

I know that’s the best I’m going to get, so I tell her thanks, then turn without another word, grab my two suitcases and head towards the train just as Blaise detaches himself from Mrs Zabini’s clutches and follows me. We inch down the corridor into the first compartment, a small one with a dirty window and two benches facing each other. As the train starts to pull away, engine rumbling beneath us, I lean up to push my cases into the luggage rack above our head, and, against my better judgement, glance over at the platform where the Zabini family is waving at Blaise, who has his face pressed against the glass, his smile wide, set with the confidence that comes from knowing you will be missed, and it’s only when I’m scanning the empty benches lined up on the platform beside them that I realise I’m looking for my mother - and then a second more to spot her: already walking away to the car park, back turned. 

I watch her for a moment, getting smaller and smaller as the train starts to speed up, and allow myself a second’s weakness to close my eyes and imagine Tonks running along after the train with her buoyant energy and affection that seems to leak out of her like a gas. 

I’m trying to push my mother out of my mind, but before I have time to properly think Blaise has leapt on my back, laughing and careless, reaching up to ruffle my hair, and even though I fight to keep the grin off my face as I throw him off, I can’t quite manage it. 

“We’re free!” He throws himself down onto one of the seats, and I decide to let him have his moment and not point out that his version of much needed ‘freedom’ is rather different from mine - and all he’s escaping is an exuberant family and a mother who cares about him enough to still bring him home his favourite packet of chocolate, even though he’s well past the age where he could start buying that for himself, and with whom he’s close enough with to call _maman_ , and whose only fault is to perhaps shower him with a _little_ too much love that it could be termed suffocating. Not that I’d know anything about motherly love. 

I smile instead, because he’s never once shoved any of it in my face, and; “yup,” I say, “every second we’re getting further away from them all.” 

I don’t just mean families - but all of it: primary school bullies, stuck up english teachers and haughty principals, the kid in the year above us who once cornered Blaise behind the school’s theatre and broke his nose because he couldn’t stomach the idea of a boy wanting to kiss another boy, the grumpy lady who works in the convenience store at the top of our road, the dog in our neighbours house that sticks its head through the gaps in the fence when you go by, snapping slick, saliva clad teeth and that never fails to make me jump even though I’d passed that house twice a day for the past seven years; all of them, we’d never have to think of again, (or so it seemed). 

We look at each other, and Blaise’s eyes dance with something because we’ve both been waiting for this for _so_ long; and I can feel it too, even though I usually try not to let myself hope, to believe, or indulge, even for a second, in the possibility that things could be good, from now on, that maybe they _will_ be good - good enough to make up for everything that’s happened, because _everyone_ deserves a little goodness at some point, don’t they? So right now, for once, I let myself believe it, because there’s a kind of dip in my stomach, and I’m a little giddy, and we’re laughing; hard and genuine - even though nothing is really funny and it’s more because neither of us can quite believe we’re finally here.  
It’s ironic, really, because ‘freedom’ is barely over an hour away from ‘home’ - but somehow that hour feels like a lifetime and thousands of miles. 

We’re still on the train; I’m pressed up against the window - because I like to look up every so often, just to make sure the countryside is still racing by; to confirm that we actually are still moving. (I have some irrational fear that it’ll all be a ruse and when we get off, the station will still be the one back in Wiltshire.) It’s only been about twenty minutes or so, but Blaise, (being Blaise) is already bored: he’s one of those people who can’t stay still, ever, regardless of the situation, always has to be moving, or doing something - once we were at a funeral and somehow over the course of the hour-long service, without Mrs Zabini noticing, just for something to do with his hands he folded all our memorial cards up into tiny squares, then ripped them along the folded edges and left a little pile of them sitting on the end of our pew. 

I’ve been waiting for him to say something – it’s inevitable, really, and so when he stands up and goes to the window for a second before turning, I’m already smiling even before he can open his mouth to mumble; _I’m going to find out if there’s food on here_ \- and I don’t say anything even though I highly doubt there is anything - the train goes right through to London after Oxford, I think, but it’s only a few hours, because I know he really just wants an excuse to walk up and down and not stay still. 

**2:36pm**

Blaise comes back armed with a steaming paper cup, and jubilant over the fact that he has, (even though he’s so intelligent a comparison between us is almost painful - I have to work three times as hard only to achieve the same result), for once, proved me wrong, and there _is_ food here - or a bar of sorts at least. 

My hands are cold, and I can only imagine it getting progressively colder as the afternoon goes by, so I think tea didn’t sound like such a bad idea. The bar is all the way at the front of the train, and I am inching back through the gap between compartments; a thin, almost uncomfortably narrow passageway, fingers wrapped around my cup, the heat just on the pleasant side of intolerably hot, the kind that almost bites - sending little pinpricks of numbing pain shooting through my palms - thinking about how Blaise is going to absolutely hate living in a dorm; small, squashed places equated with some inherent fear of his - (I like them because you can always see everything around you - nothing is about to creep up when your back is turned), wondering if Blaise would do something stupid, like sleep out in the courtyard - and that’s when I bump into him. 

It’s my own fault because I hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to where I was going, too focused on the cup, and Blaise, and whatever else, but when I look up, startled, there he is; half a metre in front of me. I think my eyes must widen a little, because, _well_ , even though I don’t have time to take in much - about an inch shorter than me, a viciously dark mess of curls that fall across his forehead, everything about him simultaneously kind of scrappy and yet somehow put-together, and eyes so green I’m actually unable to look away; except that he moves, sudden and swift, pressing himself up against the side of the compartment, presumably to be the polite one out of the two of us and let me pass through, except that he’s raised his hand up at the same time, a quick, jerky movement, brushing the hair out of his eyes, and, embarrassingly, I flinch; my torso jolting involuntarily and causing the tea to slosh against the sides of the cup, and I can feel hot blotches of it on my chest as it soaks through the front of my shirt. 

I hate when this happens; it’s so mortifyingly _weak_ , and I know it must make me look utterly pathetic - always jumpy and twitchy and so damn easily startled, and its the last impression I want to leave people with (my father hates weakness even more than I do) - so my tactic is to always try catch them before they can laugh, or, even worse, _sympathise;_ snap back quick and sharp to dispel any presumptions about my character before they can take root, and so, without thinking; 

“Watch it,” I hiss out, and I can hear the bite in my voice; not that I care about the shirt at all, really, other than the fact that I’m always scared of damaging things my father has bought because I know how angry he’ll be - and more because I’m annoyed at myself because it was _my fault_ : because I’m a nervous wreck and I wouldn’t have even been in the situation in the first place if I hadn’t been fucking _staring_. 

Or maybe it _was_ his fault; him and his damn green eyes. 

He is already apologising: “sorry, sorry!” blushing and sincere, and he’s so innocently genuine that I inwardly cringe even more because if my natural instinct wasn’t to be gripey and bitter I might have been able to ask his name. 

It’s only after I get back to our compartment, still glowering, and Blaise has eyed me over the pages of the book he’ll claim he’s only reading out of boredom, but that I know he actually loves (the idiot thinks he can take a classics degree and still fool people into believing he isn’t deeply buried in a literary passion that occasionally veers dangerously into the realms of what I would call obsession), and has given me a victorious smirk, his eyes darting down to the cup in my hands with an _I told you so_ hidden in his expression; that I realise I actually recognise him. 

Of course I do: he’s on a bunch of the covers of those blasted tabloid magazines Blaise has a fucking subscription to for the sole reason of plastering photos of men with glistening chests and trousers dripping languidly off their hips all around his walls so he can irk Mrs Zabini for all he’s worth. 

Even without _that_ type of press coverage, anyone who is educated enough to tune into the radio for five minutes, or at least glance at the news, or even a gossip column, had heard some version of the story. 

Around four months ago now, Cornelius Fudge, our prime minister, was on board a late night train from Edinburgh back to London along with 468 other unassuming passengers: lots of families returning home after the holidays for the start of the school term. 

Britain’s, and by extension Fudge’s refusal to collaborate with various oil companies based overseas has, for some years now, been slow but sure kindling to foreign hostility. As the train had hurtled across the Scottish countryside, Harry Potter, eighteen years old and clearly (the reporter had said) destined for heroics, had stepped into gangway connection between a carriage of second-class passengers and Fudge himself - (the reasons for this vary; the Sunday Mirror presumes it was some kind of intuition; the Daily Prophet claims fate, other, less besotted journalists argue it was simply luck, - I have my money on a cigarette break) - and stumbled on a woman strapped into a suicide vest.

By some miracle (the Daily Telegraph) Potter managed to talk her down: everyone was safely evacuated, the woman was escorted away, the British intelligence gained ‘infinitely valuable’ information from the mechanics of the vest that has ‘allowed them to have a level of understanding they would never have thought possible’ - Fudge has a new found saviour, and England new golden boy. 

As the initial shock had ebbed, the rumours spread, that started out believable and grew increasingly preposterous; wild speculations, or maybe fantasies: Potter now had weekly dinners with Fudge and his family, Potter was being accosted by glassy-eyed members of the public who bestowed flowers upon him, Potter had been presented with a medal of bravery by the Queen, Potter had just been adopted into the Fudge family as a third child. 

It wasn’t that I minded; stories like this often appeared in the paper - it _is_ England after all; with its privileged, continually bored population who likes nothing better than someone to fawn over - and at first I had even been mildly impressed, except that one morning, the third that the story had appeared in some form on the front page of the Prophet, which my father has delivered every morning and which he reads over breakfast, he’d pushed back his seat, scraping harshly against the wooden floorboards, shaken the paper closed, and; “clearly, other peoples’ sons aren’t as worthless as you are,” which made me scowl at each fresh article that appeared, and grow to equate the name ‘Potter’ with another short-coming on my behalf, and yet another reminder of all I was not. 

Having to see him stare up at me, (through impossibly thick, dark lashes I was not at all jealous of) from various glossy prints blue-tacked to the doors of Blaise’s wardrobe didn’t exactly alleviate my annoyance. 

“What’s up with you?” Blaise asks, after I throw myself down on the opposite seat with a huff. 

“Nothing,” I grit out, and try to pretend it isn’t, and that I’m not just the pettiest person ever to exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from a quote by Michelangelo.


End file.
